Page:From Yauco to Las Marias.djvu/111

Rh dug fields, it took up a temporary position on a convenient knoll. The main body of our command had meanwhile arrived, and got into the row without ceremony, the firing now being heavy on both sides. My memory serves me with no clear impression of the sequence of events after this period.

During the first hour of our fighting all the powder used by us was as smokeless as that of the foe, and again and again the remark was passed that this did not seem like the real business of war. In other respects as well there were few of the accompaniments that we conjure up in our stay-at-home imagination of battle scenes. There was a little galloping of hooves, not long sustained; an occasional sharp cry of command or sharper oath; an intermittent rumble and jar from the infrequently moved artillery, not yet in action; and perhaps a groan or two from the wounded. But, even when the field-rifles began to boom and shroud the landscape in drifting smoke, the make-believe aspect of the affair did not in any degree diminish. There were no clouds of dust,